


they keep talkin', i keep walkin'

by inmylife



Category: Wild Swans - Jessica Spotswood
Genre: Canon Trans Character, F/F, Future Fic, Small Towns, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 03:34:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20037226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmylife/pseuds/inmylife
Summary: Gracie Milbourne is eighteen. She's come to Cecil every summer since she was six. It's home.Ella Morris is eighteen. She left Cecil when she was eight, and didn't look back.





	they keep talkin', i keep walkin'

**Author's Note:**

> ok i may have botched the names of 2 of ella's sisters, i think only abby and vanessa (?) were named in the book but i cant remember if the other two were as well  
yes this is in first person. i'm not sorry  
edit 12/26/19 when i first published this i had this note saying "im cis please tell me if i fucked up writing ella" but turns out im not cis lmao. this is fine

I was three the first time I wore a dress. 

I was six when I first shouted that I was a girl. 

I was seven when Dad started sleeping on the couch. 

I was eight when Mom packed up and moved me, Vanessa, Sophie, and Lauren to Arlington, just outside of DC proper. 

I haven't been back to Cecil since. 

Cecil, Maryland, is a quiet, quaint little beach town that attracts a lot of college students and no tourists. It's home to what they like to claim is the "oldest college in the United States", but I don't think that's actually true. I think, somewhere along the line, someone decided to move the founding date back a few years on all the documents, so this place could have something it could think itself famous for. 

Arlington isn't that bad of a place to grow up. Everyone's liberal (or liberal enough to let me live as a girl, anyway, and keep their mouths shut if they don't like it), it's not a city but it's not in the middle of nowhere, folks are nice to each other but generally mind their own business. I don't hate it. I guess I just wish that when we'd moved, we'd moved somewhere interesting. 

Not that I'm complaining, of course. We moved because of me. 

For a few years, we'd all stuff ourselves into the car every couple months or so and drive the hour back to Cecil to see Dad. I hated it. I had to share the backseat with Sophie and Lauren - stuck in the middle because I was the youngest - and Dad always deadnamed me. I had a panic attack on one of those visits when I was twelve and Mom didn't make me go after that. 

Sophie and Lauren are in college now, at summer internships in South Dakota and California respectively. Vanessa's long gone - she's twenty-four and has her own life in the Twin Cities. 

Abby's reconnected with her high school boyfriend and is maybe having some kind of Millenial quarter-life crisis, because at twenty-nine she's gone and moved herself back to Cecil to be with him. 

And I'm helping her move in. 

I refused to get my learner's permit, let alone my license, so I'm stuck in the passenger seat, glaring out at the highway while Mom drives me the last place in the world I want to go. I'm ignoring her. My headphones are in and I have my music up as loud as it can go - I'm too focused on being angry to even really care what it is, but it's something with a lot of guitar that she can definitely hear in the background of whatever shit she has on the radio. 

We take the exit off towards Cecil. I tab the volume button at the side of my phone - I know it can't go up any further, but it's an expression of my irritation more than it is anything else. 

I can't believe she's making me do this. I mean, I hated it there. It's conservative as all hell - after Mom stopped listening to Dad and let me go by Ella and wear dresses to school, I got shoved around and called words no adult should have to hear, let alone a third grader. (Looking back, I'm kind of stunned that kids that age knew those words in the first place.) We'd go out in public and get stared at, I remember that from back when we lived there and I remember that from visiting Dad. The only people who actually called me Ella and didn't care were my mom, my sisters, and two of Abby's friends when they were home from college. 

And, of course, Dad's there. In the grand scheme of things, he's kind of okay, for my absent transphobic father - he pays Mom alimony on time, he talks to my sisters on the regular, and he doesn't try to talk to me anymore. But he called me all sorts of awful things for being a girl, even hit me a couple times, and whenever we had to see him after we moved out he still refused to call me Ella even though I showed up in skirts and wore my hair as long as it would grow. It made me feel small and squirmy inside. I think maybe I also just hate him for contributing my Y chromosome that caused us all this trouble in the first place.

I'd like to see him misgender me now that I'm actually growing breasts. (I'm only in Sophie's A cup bras, because she was pretty flat, but you better believe the first time I put one of them on I screamed like I was on a roller coaster ride.) Maybe that's what'll make him figure it out. 

I don't actually believe that.

We park in front of a small house just off Main Street that looks vaguely, theoretically familiar. I sit in the car until I feel Mom's eyes on me through the windshield. Then I slam the car door open as dramatically as I can and heave myself out of the car. I'm still glaring. 

I keep my headphones in and stay in one place, eyes fixed on the lawn, until I can sense Mom yelling at me. I can't hear her, my music's still on, but I think everyone has an instinct for when their parents are mad. 

I yank out my headphones and hear her say, presumably for the fourth or fifth time, "ELLA!"

"God, what," I answer. 

"Come on. Your father won't be here, Abby made sure of that. Don't you want to see your sister again? Besides, we're just going to be decorating and having dinner. It won't kill you." 

Abby's fine, I guess. She graduated when I was seven and then did a year and a half at the college in Cecil before transferring to a big research university in New Hampshire. I gather no one expected it out of her. The point is, we're not close. She's more like my aunt than my sister in terms of how often I see her. I don't even know what she's doing for a job now, or how she met Ty again. She's closer with Dad than any of my other sisters, and I don't like it.

I look across the street from Abby's house and I see a MAGA sign. I feel about as safe here as a horseshoe crab stranded upside down on the beach. 

I hurry up and go inside. 

"Ella!" 

Abby hugs me the moment I step in the door. It throws me for a loop, I'm kind of startled. This is a rush of energy I don't think I've seen in Abby in all the holidays and summers we've spent together. This isn't the distant big sister I remember. 

"How are you, honey? Your hair's gotten so long, oh my god," she gushes. My hair is the first thing most people notice about me, even before they notice I'm five foot eleven. It's bright red and goes all the way down to my waist. I'm disappointed that Abby either doesn't notice or doesn't comment on my boobs. Vanessa noticed. 

"Uh. I'm okay," I answer awkwardly. Abby picks up on the fact that if she wants chitchat, she's gonna have to get it from Mom, and leaves me be. 

I hear her tell Mom that Ty's out of the house with his guy friends, so we have the house to ourselves. "A girls' day!" Mom exclaims. As much as I'd love a girls' day, I don't want to spend it in Cecil, moving furniture.

Because that's what I do. I'm the tallest and the most fit out of the three of us - Mom's getting old and Abby's out of shape - so I get to do the fun things like move bookshelves and carry dressers up staircases. When I say "fun", that's absolutely not what I mean. It's monotonous, but it gets better once Mom lets me put my headphones back in and I can drown out Mom and Abby talking about things like who's died and who's moved and who's had babies and Dad. 

Abby makes chicken and rice for dinner. Ty's still out. I don't know almost anything about Ty. He and Abby broke up for the first time the first week of senior year, so I had no reason to see him back when we lived here. It's awkward, at their kitchen table just the three of us. The table is small and round and a very pale shade of tan. I stare at the table instead of making eye contact with Mom or Abby, because if I look up they'll try to rope me into their conversation. 

But then Abby starts talking about how there's so much left for her to do tomorrow, and Mom offers to stay overnight, and then I _have_ to look up because _no, she can't be serious_. I barely get a few scandalized "Mom, no!"s in there before they've just up and decided. 

Then Mom looks over to me and says, "I'm sorry, Ella, but we can't just abandon Abby with this." 

Something courses through me. I don't know if it's anger or frustration or what but I push the chair back from the table so hard it falls to the floor when I stand up from it and I grab my phone and my headphones off the end table by Abby's front door and I _just start walking_. 

When I was eight years old, I'm sure I knew Cecil, Maryland like the back of my hand. I probably knew every street and every corner and every business and every face I'd pass by, and maybe when I stormed out the door some part of me thought that maybe I'd still remember, somehow. Subconsciously. The thing is, it's been ten years since I last lived here and four years since I've been here at all, and it's getting dark outside because we'd had dinner real late and this was summertime, and now I'm lost. I think I'm in some kind of park. I'm standing on a cracked sidewalk next to a whole bunch of grass and a very weathered picnic table. It feels sort of familiar, abstractly, but not familiar enough for me to get my bearings. It's disorienting. 

I sigh and sit down on the picnic table. It's rough under my fingers and it's had a lot of things carved into it over the years - C+I forever, Principal Dennis sucks balls, typical stuff like that - but it's not splintery. There's a park in Arlington where there's an arts festival one weekend every year, and in that park there's a ton of ancient picnic tables like these, except there they're all splintery and I don't sit on them because one of the two most physically painful experiences of my life was when I got a splinter under my fingernail when I was fifteen and now I refuse to go near any wood that looks like it's anything less than smooth. 

What I really want to do right now is run. Just, run and run and don't look back and not worry about getting lost or someone seeing me and recognizing me. That's what I do when I'm pissed off at home in Arlington, I walk to the middle school four blocks away and run laps until I feel better or feel like I'm about to collapse (or both). I'd join the track team, but they won't let me run with the other girls. (Hearing that in the ninth grade made me mad enough to go for an hour and a half on the middle school track. It burned inside.) 

But I can't do that here. The more I run, the further away I'll get from Abby's house or anywhere else I recognize, and that'll just make it harder for me to go back there so we can leave - or I run the risk of bumping into Dad. People here don't forget easily, and a six year old in a dress when they thought she wasn't supposed to be wearing one isn't something even forgetful people forget. If I run anywhere with my Irish red hair and my height, folks will recognize me as _the Morris' youngest, don't you remember..?_ and that's the last thing I want.

So I sit at the picnic table, energy pounding in my veins, staring down at my shoes. They're pink hiking shoes that I've maybe had a little too long. Pink hiking shoes plus plain white socks plus Old Navy jean shorts plus The Regrettes t-shirt makes Ella. The Regrettes t-shirt over Sophie's A-cup bra above polka dot underwear under Old Navy jean shorts makes Ella. Long red hair and five foot ten and big wide hands and smooth-shaven legs and deep brown eyes makes Ella. Ella Ella Ella, my name is Ella and for some reason being in Cecil, Maryland for the first time in six years makes me feel like I have to reassure myself of that fact.

I hear someone else's feet on the sidewalk. I hear the feet stop. I hear their owner say, in a shocked voice, "Ella?" 

I look up and I see the bright blue eyes of Gracie Milbourne, standing in front of me. 

She got hot. 

Gracie's the half-sister of one of Abby's best friends. She started coming to town the summer we were six, and I saw her two more summers after that before we moved. Besides my sisters, Mom, and Abby's friends, Gracie was the only person to call me Ella back then. 

She's a lot shorter than me, and her hair's short too, cut cleanly down to her chin. She has wide shoulders and a skinny build, and she's wearing a blue crop top. 

"Gracie," I answer. 

"Jesus, it _is_ you," she says, sinking down onto the bench next to me. "Oh my god, what are you doing here, hi." 

"I'm helping Abby move back in," I tell her. 

"I - what are you doing _here_?" she asks, and gestures to the park around us. 

I answer. "Pissed at my mom. I think I'm lost."

"You still pissed?"

I nod. 

"Wanna go to the beach? Catch up? I missed you." 

"God, please." I stand at the same time Gracie does, and now our height difference is really obvious. 

"How tall are you, fuck - like, six feet?" Gracie stares up incredulously. I'm used to being taller than most other girls, but I'll be honest - this feels weird to me too. The last time I saw Gracie we were about the same height. 

"Five ten," I correct. 

"Five two," she responds in kind. 

"Jesus, you're short." We start walking. She clearly knows where we're going, which is nice, because I have no idea. "How've, uh. How've you been?" 

Gracie shrugs. "Eh, you know. Mom's in and out of rehab, Dad's fine, Isobel went into inpatient once and now she's living with Ivy's friend Claire in New York, Ivy and Connor moved back here after my grandpa died and now they have the house."

That's heavy stuff. "Shit."

"DC's fine, finished high school, in the fall I'm gonna -"

Wait. "DC. _That's_ where you live? Like, when you're not here?"

She nods and blinks at me like I should have known this. 

"Gracie, I live in Arlington. Ten years, we lived twenty minutes away from each other, and -"

"Oh my god." We both burst out laughing. Gracie has a pretty laugh - she laughs with her mouth closed and it bubbles up in her throat and makes her sound like a peppy fantasy character. 

There's a sort of awkward silence until we hit the beach. I'd fill her in on what I'm doing, but the only interesting things I have to talk about are college, track, and my transition. I don't think Gracie wants to hear about any of that. Not college, because we've just graduated high school and everyone is sick of talking about college right now; not track, because Gracie had always been into art (and if the paint on her clothes is any indication, she still is); not my transition, because, well. That's not really her business. 

I don't think I've ever been to this part of the beach before. We'd go, back when I lived here, but I don't think it was to this stretch. I know there was a section where high schoolers and the college kids would have parties - maybe that's where we are? It's a Tuesday, so it makes sense that it's empty. 

"Come on," she tells me, tilting her head. "Sit." 

We sit. It's peaceful - the waves crashing, the sky darkening, the lack of anyone else but us. I haven't been to the beach in a while. I don't like anyplace I'm expected to wear a bathing suit. But it's nice here. The air is cool and the sand feels nice beneath me. 

"So why were you mad at your mom?" 

I feel almost bad that Gracie broke the silence. It was so peaceful the way it was before. I want to live in that moment for the rest of my life. 

"I don't want to be here," I start. 

Gracie nods. "I get that." 

"No, but it's like -" I don't know how to explain this. "Everyone knows me here. I mean, everyone knows me in Arlington, but here everyone knows me as, like. You know. Everyone _knows_. My deadname and stuff. And people aren't so nice about that here." 

I look back down at my shoes. Pink hiking shoes and plain white socks and awkwardness and next to a pretty girl makes Ella. 

I don't want to talk about this stuff. With my closest friends in Arlington (who are both also queer), I'll drop references to dysphoria or my deadname or HRT or whatever, because I trust them, but even then I don't go into too much detail unless I really have to. I'm proud of who I am, but it feels like if I talk about it too much I'm just reminding everyone else that I'm that little bit of different. Reminding _myself_. At home, everyone just _knows_. I didn't have to explain to my friends why I didn't want to come help Abby move. And, I mean, I trust Gracie, but I haven't seen her in ten years. She was always accepting and all, but I don't _know_ her.

"And Mom said we'd stay another day to help Abby finish and I really don't want to do that."

Gracie shifts in the sand. "Oh."

"Yeah." 

I huff and flop back onto the sand so I'm lying down. After a second, she joins me. 

"Everyone here knows me by my mom's name." 

I turn my head to look at Gracie. "Hmm?"

I remember, vaguely, that Gracie's mom was kind of a mess, but I don't know much else beyond that. 

"I mean, everyone here calls me Gracie _Milbourne_. You probably do too." She's not wrong. "And that's my mom's last name, not my dad's. Not mine. Iz and Ivy have that name, but not me. And because there's this, this history, right, of substance abuse going back to my great-great-grandmother - matrilineally - we're all stuck with the name, and whenever I walk around or Ivy does or Isobel we all get these weird looks like we're going to go crazy. Like we'll make great art, but at what cost." 

"That sucks," I tell her. 

"Ivy's pregnant, you know. I heard her tell Connor she wants to hyphenate. It's weird because for so long, when I first met her and whatever, she hated the name, and now she wants to hold onto it and she's gonna saddle this baby with it. Knowing us, it'll be a girl, and then Ivy will go some kind of crazy and then it'll be that baby's turn to be stared at." 

I think for a second. "Maybe Ivy could just try weed," I suggest. I make sure Gracie can tell I'm joking. "If she's gotta be addicted to something - it doesn't have to be men or drugs or alcohol or, like, I don't know. It's illegal, but it's not gonna hurt her." 

"Yeah." Gracie answers absently enough that I worry she's taking it seriously. "And, I don't know. I worry that I'm going my own kind of crazy." 

"You're not," I assure her. Then I reach over and take her hand. 

We stay like that for a second. Her hand, my hand, together, warm. Sea breeze blowing over us, waves crashing in front of us, stars and stars above us. I want to stay here forever. I don't want to go back to Abby's or to Arlington or to college. I just want to stay here. Me and Gracie.

She sits up, and it's sudden, and it startles me. She's broken nice quiet moments like these three times now. 

Gracie pulls out her phone from her back pocket. "Uh, here," she says, thrusting it at me, unlocked. "Put your number in. We'll - we can talk. Catch up for real." 

"Oh - I - yeah." I hand my phone over to her. As I put my number in, I wrap my hand around the pop socket on the back of her case, and when I finish, I turn it over to see what it is. 

Our eyes go colorblind in the dark. I took a neuroscience class last year and we learned about it. I guess I'd never really thought about it that way, because no matter how much light is shining I know what color my bedroom walls are or whatever. My brain just fills in the gaps. 

So it takes me a second for my brain to fill in the three lines on Gracie's pop socket. Two colors with a third line in the middle. 

It's the bi flag, and something inside me jumps.

I give Gracie back her phone.

"Ah, thanks," she says. 

"Yeah," I say.

Her eyes are blue. I can't see the color precisely because it's dark, but I know that they're blue and piercing. She has paint on her hands and on her legs and on her jean shorts, and her fingers are dug into the sand, like mine. 

She just looks so beautiful like that, her blonde hair blowing gently in the sea breeze. We're far enough away from the city that there are so many more stars in the sky than in Arlington. It doesn't feel like the same universe. 

I kiss her. 

I lean over and place my lips on hers. This is not something I have ever done before. Arlington-universe Ella is shy about relationships, is almost scared of them. But maybe this-universe Ella is brave.

Gracie doesn't pull away. 

I pull away first, and I'm scared all of a sudden. Just because she likes girls doesn't mean she'd like _me_ \- I should have asked first - what if she's dating someone? But then she reaches over and takes my hand, this time, and she says, "let's do this again." 

Arlington can wait one more day.

I was thirteen when I changed my legal name.

I was fifteen when I started blockers. 

I was sixteen when I started estrogen. 

I was eighteen when I kissed a girl.

I was eighteen when I kissed Gracie Milbourne, on the beach, under the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> okay, i know i'm the only person writing fic for this book, but something just struck me about the playdate between gracie and ella? idk  
i'm also just stunned by the inclusion of ella as a character, like she's a kid sister who doesn't have a plot arc that gets resolved she's just kind of there? and i was thinking about this and going like, i wish there was a book about her growing up and all that  
so then i wrote this fic
> 
> i'm on tumblr at everykissbeginswith or twitter at vivasunn (or 105sunnykay because the first one is my kpop twitter lol)


End file.
